Latest revision as of 16:48, 15 July 2009

Bacon, Robert (1860, Massachusetts - 1919, New York). Boston brahmin, associate of J.P. Morgan, Secretary of State replacing Elihu Root in the Taft Administration, American Ambassador to France in 1910, Harvard Fellow.

Bacon returned to Paris in 1914 to head up the American Ambulance of Paris, a privately sponsored military hospital run by volunteers and focus of American war relief activities in France. His wife remained in New York to spearhead the funding drives for the Ambulance. Bacon was an early promoter of volunteer American ambulance driver services. He was also an advocate of American war preparedness, participated in the Plattsburg camp and, with America entering the war, was appointed chief liaison officer of the AEF at British General Headquarters, serving also on General Haig's personal staff. Exhausted by his war efforts, Bacon died in New York while being operated on for an illness contracted in France. (See: James Brown Scott, Robert Bacon, Life and Letters, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1923)